


Hoard Sitter

by Slaskia



Series: Demonakos' Playground [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Gen, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 03:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3194318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slaskia/pseuds/Slaskia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was stated that Smaug hadn't been seen for 60 years, before Thorin and his company went to Erebor to try to reclaim their homeland.  This is my take on why Smaug wasn't seen.<br/>Not meant to be canon possible, as it was written for fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoard Sitter

A cold wind blew over his scaled hide, but he felt none of the cold winds bite, due to the fire that was always burning within.  Smaug flew high and quickly, away from the Grey Mountains and back toward the Lone Mountain.  Back to his hoard he took from the Dwarves and Men of Erebor and Dale, respectively. 

Anxiety tugged at his gut, for it was rare for him to leave his hoard for so long.  Actually, he never had before, due to a mix of paranoia and innate greed.  Like many dragons, he coveted gold and other forms of wealth and jealously guarded what he had.  Thus it had been hard to leave to attend to a ‘family obligation’, for fear the residents of the nearby Lake Town, or even the Elves of Mirkwood, would be tempted to steal from him in his absence. 

That is, until another dragon had come to visit him, a rather odd looking dragon that looked like living proof against breeding between two species.  This dragon was also oddly not interested in his hoard and was more interested instead in conversation and other things.  Smaug actually did enjoy talking with this dragon, feeling, for once, relieved that he didn’t have to worry about a visitor being tempted to steal from his hoard.  Thus, he decided to hire this dragon to guard his hoard while he was away. 

Now though, he had that nagging feeling, that something was wrong.  So he flew as fast as he could, arriving at the ruined front gate of Erebor by nightfall.  Quickly, he squeezed through the gate and headed for the massive chamber where he had gathered his hoard.  When he entered, his jaws opened in shock.  Where before his hoard was gathered into one pile, in a sea of gold, gems and other treasures, it was now ‘arranged’, for lack of a better word, into something else entirely. 

The countless numbers of gold coins were now in neat stacks, some nearly reaching the roof of the massive chamber.  A couple of these stacks were arranged into massive sculptures:  one was a model of the mountain itself, while the other looked like a huge tower he’d heard about far to the south, at the boarder of Rohan and Gondor.  For both, various other items were used as accents and details. 

Elsewhere, the collection of gold shields had been turned into a carefully balanced pyramid.  Golden chalices and goblets were stacked end over end into a high tower.  On the floor were various mosaics made of silver, gold and jewels:  some were of random patterns, but other’s depicted events from history, such as the War of Wrath and the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. 

For a moment, Smaug stood there, dumbstruck what he was seeing.  That feeling was eventually replaced by anger.  “DEMONAKOS!” he bellowed, the intensity of his cry causing a couple of coin stacks, and the goblet tower, to collapse. 

“Oh bother,” a voice said from above.  “Did you have to scream, Smaug?  It took forever to get those things balanced just right.” 

“Get down here at once!” 

“Alright, alright, I’m coming.” 

Looking up, Smaug watched as the smaller, black dragon glided down from an alcove above, landing perfectly, without disturbing any of the structures or mosaics he had created.  Looking upon him once more, Smaug still felt the dragon was odd looking. 

He had four limbs and two wings, like that of Ancalagon, the father of winged dragons, but their arrangement was asymmetrical.  On the right side, the wing was load bearing, the wing land planted firmly on the floor.  The forelimb on this side was pathetically tiny, not even big enough to scratch his own chin without bending his neck extremely far down.  The hind-limb looked mostly normal, save for abnormally large sickle claw on the inner-most toe.  The left side was rather different:  strong, load-bearing forelimb, the wing tightly folded against his side and the hind-limb had three normal toes. 

Even the dragon’s head was asymmetrical.  The left side looked pretty normal, in Smaug’s eyes anyway, a crest of horns starting from the brow ridge and continued down behind and stopping a third down the underside of the lower jaw.  However, the right side, was again, different.  Instead of horns, there was a short, dark grey beard that went from the back of the jaw, to the tip of the chin.  There was only one horn on this side and it curved out and downward, in contrast to the left which curved gently upward.  Even the jawline was different: the lower jaw being noticeably larger than the left side.  At least the eyes were both the same color:  a bright blood red, though the right one had no pupil.  

Overall, this dragon was just misshapen, weird and totally didn’t know how to treat someone’s hoard with respect!  Smaug now realized that trusting this dragon had been a mistake.  “What is the meaning of this?  What did you do to my hoard!?”  Smaug demanded, the fire within him starting to burn hot. 

“I got bored,” Demonakos said nonchalantly with a casual shrug.  “So I thought to amuse myself by seeing how many ways I can organize it.” 

“I hired you to watch my hoard while I was gone.  Key word: _WATCH_ , not play around with it!”  With a flick of his tail, he knocked down the shield pyramid.  

Demonakos looked at the destruction of his work with a brief look of distain before replying.  “Yes, yes, I know,” the misshapen black dragon said, his tiny right forearm waving dismissively.  “However, you didn’t inform me that this job would be so _boring_.  I was expecting you to get visitors from time to time, you know…like virgin sacrifices, or even attempts to steal all this gold.  But no…it seems you did _too_ good a job at terrifying the locals:  no one wants to even come to have a simple _chat_. 

“So what else was I supposed to do?  Just sit on all this?” The dragon spun around, gesturing toward the stacks of gold around them with his claws, somehow managing to miss toppling any further structures with his long tail.  “How mind numbingly boring.  I would have gone mad doing nothing but _sitting_ for two weeks!  I don’t like being bored…so you know it’s pretty bad when someone like _me_ starts to _organize_ things.” 

Smaug growled at how dismissive, and _disrespectful_ , this dragon was being toward the whole thing.  “Bored or not, you had no right to move a single _coin_ ,” he snarled. 

“Oh don’t be such a stick up the ass,” Demonakos huffed.  “Really though, leaving all this wealth laying around like that was just asking for trouble.  With your fire, you could have smelted it all down and turned it into a massive statue or two:  such a thing would have been much easier to keep an eye on, you know.  Or heck, you could have coated this whole chamber with gold, how pretty would that have been?  All the shining gold reflecting your terrible magnificence from all angles! 

“Oh!  You could have also invested all this into long term commitments:  I hear Mordor is seeking financing for future campaigns….” 

This dragon’s long winded blabbering was starting to make his head hurt.  And the suggestions he was giving were all inconceivable!  He really didn’t know the proper etiquette for keeping a hoard. “Just get out…,” he hissed, his patience at its limit..  “Your _services_ are no longer needed.” 

“What, no payment?” Demonakos said, his eyes wide in mock shock. 

His temper already at its breaking point, Smaug roared and blew a gaunt of flame at the strange dragon.  Of course the smaller dragon would have been impervious to the fire, as he was not fazed by it at all.  Rather than be angry at the attack, however, Demonakos seemed more amused than anything else.  A fact that only frustrated Smaug all the more. 

“Ah,” Demonakos cooed.  “That’s more like it.  A little bit of excitement for once.  That’s enough of a payment for me.” 

Finally the black dragon turned and started to leave.  Then, he paused and said, in a slightly mocking tone.  “By the way, Smaugy, you may want to work on that temper of yours.  It’s only going to get you into trouble in the end.” 

“OUT!”  Smaug bellowed, preparing to dose him with another gaunt of flame, more to relieve the growing pressure of fire in his belly than anything else. 

“I’m going, I’m going.  Keep your scales on!” 

Smaug watched the black dragon intensely, until his dark form finally disappeared through the ruins of the front gate.  With a heavy sigh, Smaug turned his attention to putting his hoard back to the way it was before, gladly starting to knock down the ‘sculptures’ Demonakos turned his hoard into.  He shouldn’t have trusted that shifty fellow, but he did not want to the risk of his precious hoard being plundered while he was gone.  That all that dragon did was organize was fortunate, really, considering he claimed to be a ‘lord of chaos’.  That is, if Demonakos was telling the truth about his status to begin with and not just trying to impress him. 

_Still, I am not leaving my hoard again,_ he decided.  _Not going to risk trusting any more hoard sitters._  

That meant no more participating in family reunions, but that was fine by him.  So few showed up these days that it wasn’t really worth it anyway….

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few references to actual Tolkian lore in this. Also, it is not clear, officially, if Ancalagon was a four-limbed dragon like PJ's Smaug (two legs, two wings), or a six-limbed liked Rankan Bass's Smaug (four limbs, two wings). I was going by a piece of artwork I saw of said dragon.


End file.
